Creating Your Year-End Financial Checklist

It is that time of the year where you make and list and check it twice! But no we are not talking about Santa Claus or your Christmas shopping list, we are speaking about your financial checklist. Everyone’s situation is different, and complexities are inevitable. So Bankrate.com created a few tasks you might want to consider squeezing in before 2018 comes to an end, per the experts (you might see a familiar name):

1. Make sure your holiday spending estimates are brutally honest

Soon enough, if not already, you might declare this and that
financial resolution. But in December, there is the added risk of
digging yourself into a deeper financial hole from all of that holiday
spending. So, try to get ahead of that particular red flag by doing the
math of what will cost you what — and be brutally honest.

“They haven’t accounted for, you know, the new towels they are going
to buy for the house because guests are coming or the extra food that
they are going to spend [money on] to have a big family dinner or the
travel costs they are going to incur to go visit somebody and on and on
and on,” Khalfani-Cox says.

2. Take stock of your finances

Take stock of your finances, including debt and savings. We know: it
can feel painful and emotional to do so. But, it will give you a
baseline to help you decide what to do next.

“Just make sure you look at these numbers,” says Ethan Bloch, founder and chief executive of Digit, an automated savings app.

Ash Exantus, director of financial education at BankMobile and
author known as “Ash Cash,” also recommends taking stock of whether you
achieved your 2018 financial goals — if you set them.

If you didn’t hit them, don’t dwell on defeat. Instead, learn from
what happened or didn’t happen. And regardless of where you are at, it’s
better to check in than not over the long haul.

“Your money telling you what to do instead of you telling it what to
do is really not going to allow you to live the life that you want to
live,” Exantus says.

3. Start dreaming about your next financial goal

Now for the fun part: Get dreaming and set your financial goal or goals for next year.

Need a starting place? Deb Kriebel, partner and a wealth manager at
Pinnacle Advisory Group, encourages you to try save more than the year
before.

“At the end of the year, maybe you look and maybe say ‘oh, I wasn’t
able to max out my 401(k) this year. I’m going to max out next year,’”
Kriebel says. “Or ‘I wasn’t able to get to a Roth. I’m going to try to
do that next year.’ Or, you set up an investment account and you are
saving and then say maybe ‘I’m going to increase that by 10 percent.’
And you kind of set a target for yourself for the next year to save
more, invest more.”

Whatever your goal is — to increase savings or not —write it down
somewhere and choose a starting point to try to attain it. Spoiler
alert: even this part is hard. So, don’t go wild here with goals.
Digit’s Bloch recommends focusing on one goal and figuring out how much
you need by when.

Get specific with the costs, too. ‘I want to get a car this year’
isn’t enough, Exantus says. You’ll want to consider what kind of car,
how much it will cost, including insurance and gas expenses.

4. Consider your employment situation

Carve out the time to think about where you’re going career wise or
life wise and where you want to go as it will inevitably tie to one side
of your balance sheet: your income and earning potential.

“I think it’s one of the biggest things most people could do that is really underrated right now in our society,” Bloch says.

Part of this soul searching should include assessing how much your
employer pays you — and deciding whether you need to do something
differently.

“Really focus on what are those goals you want to accomplish, how do
you want to accomplish them and what are the tools you need in order to
accomplish them — whether it’s a new job or a side hustle,” Exantus
says.

5. Use fintech or digital banking apps to help you automate and understand your cash flow

Evaluating your cash flow doesn’t have to be a laborious experience.
Apps like Mint can comb through your financial data to help you get a
handle on your spending and savings across all of your accounts. Your
bank may also offer similar functionality. Large banks, like Citi, and small banks, like Mercantile Bank of Michigan,
offer digital budgeting tools, for example. Depending on how many
accounts you have, it might just mean you logging in to a couple of
mobile apps to see where you stand.

Then, consider what financial areas you might want to automate, so
that the task gets done without requiring regular work from you. This won’t be everything.

“The reality is most people can’t fully automate their financial life
because they don’t have enough cash for buffers,” Digit’s Bloch says.
“To really automate everything, you need a pool of cash in your checking
account. In reality, most people just don’t have that.”

So, consider settling on the areas of your finances that you can
safely automate. This approach could help you avoid the inertia that
comes with taking on a manual banking task that could feel daunting,
like paying down college debt.

“Most people do not want to manage their money every day or every
week and they shouldn’t. It’s ridiculous,” Bloch says. “I don’t know
how to grow my food. I eat food every day. It works great. I don’t know
how to repair my car. I drove it to work today. It works great. … I
think [finance] is going to become like this.”

6. Max out your 401(k) and find other ways to save

Now is the time to contribute the maximum amount to your 401(k), if you have one and have the funds to do so.

If you are under 50, you can contribute up to $18,500 in 2019. If you
are 50 or older, you can contribute another $6,000. The perks of
pre-tax contributions coming from your paycheck are reducing your
taxable income, and at the same time, forcing you to save, Pinnacle
Advisory Group’s Kriebel says.

To save more, consider opening up a Roth IRA,
which allows you to put after-tax money aside that grows tax-free at a
time of year where you have a good idea of your annual income.

This year, the maximum amount workers can contribute to a Roth IRA is
$5,500 — if you’re younger than 50. That goes up to $6,000 in 2019. Pro
tip: the amount you can contribute changes based on your income. If
you’re single, contributions start to phase out at $120,000.

“I think it’s a fabulous way for anyone to save if you are under the income thresholds,” she says.

Unlike a retirement account, a Roth IRA lets you take the principal
out — what you contributed to it —with no tax. “It’s a great way to have
a kind of emergency fund,” Kriebel says. “But in the same regard,
invest it, let it grow and hopefully you won’t need it [and] it will
just keep growing.”

7. Take advantage of tax breaks

But there are breaks to consider, such as if you’re a small-business
owner. Case in point: In the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provision, a qualified business income (QBI) deduction lets small-business owners deduct as much as 20 percent of their qualified business income.

“It is a nice way to not get taxed on all your income while you’re trying to build,” Kriebel says.

It may also be a good time to check in with your accountant before year’s end, especially if you have a big milestone ahead.

“I know that nobody everybody likes to think about the tax man,” The
Money Coach’s Khalfani-Cox says. “But it’s often the case that you can
save yourself a lot of money in the following year or better plan how to
get ahead by being strategic during the last quarter and certainly the
last month of the year. So, anything that you can do before the end of
2018, by December 31, that can lower your tax bite with Uncle Sam is
definitely time and effort and money well spent.”

8. Whatever your decisions are, be intentional about them

At this time of year, you’ll be getting a lot of opinions on what you
ought to do with your money — including pressure from family members.

But only you know what you want. So, while spending pressure may be
overflowing this holiday season, consider what you really want to
achieve. Perhaps that means making gifts, instead of buying them, to
avoid overspending. But prepare to be courageous — your verdict may very
well go against the social norms of your circle at an emotionally
charged time of year.

“Everyone has different ideas of what the holidays should be,” Amy Jo
Lauber, CFP and president of Lauber Financial Planning. “Love and
family and friendship and relationships and money, everything gets all
tangled up at this time of this year. So, it’s hard to kind of keep your
footing. … Come January, you don’t want to be completely blindsided and
you don’t want to be full of regret. Regret is a very expensive
emotion. I would want everyone to do things intentionally whatever they
decide to do.”

Ash Exantus aka Ash Cash is one of the nation’s top personal finance experts. Dubbed as the Financial Motivator, he uses a culturally responsive approach in teaching financial literacy. He is the Head of Financial Education at BankMobile and Editor-in-Chief at Paradigm Money. The views and opinions expressed are those of Ash Cash and not the views of BankMobile and/or its affiliates.

Amazon has 30,000 Jobs they Need to Fill + How the Gig Economy is Making it Hard for Them to Fill

Amazon has more open jobs than ever before. The company is attempting to hire 30,000 permanent employees in the U.S. alone. The jobs are spread out across departments and at locations throughout the country. Filling them is an especially tall order in such a tight labor market, with unemployment hovering near a 50-year low. To get started, the tech and retail giant will hold job fairs on Sept. 17 in six cities: Arlington, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Nashville and Seattle.

Jobs may be so abundant because of the growth of the gig economy that allows people to work where they want doing what they want. Gig economy jobs continue to grow in popularity in the U.S., accounting for at least 5% of the workforce. So how do you fully take advantage? Moneyish.com recently wrote an article titled: The secret to making $115 an hour in the gig economy

In the article they give us 10 best fields for gig workers based on pay and job availability:

The first trend you might notice is that this list is dominated by tech jobs. Gavin Graham, the special projects editor for FitSmallBusiness.com, says this is because these types of jobs lend themselves well to the gig economy and are growing fields that pay well.

So what exactly do people in the no. 1-rated artificial
intelligence-deep learning field do? “They help develop “the technology
that drives the ability of artificial intelligence to ‘learn’ and
adapt,” says Graham. “Jobs in this field include developers who code the
underlying algorithms using tools and programming languages, such as
MATLAB, Python, Java, C++, Tensorflow, etc..,” he adds.

One possible surprise on the list: Instagram marketing. It lands on
the list because job growth has been very rapid, he explains. While many
companies have worked on Facebook and Twitter marketing, their
Instagram platforms are less developed — and in need of help.

Ariana Grande sues Forever 21 for $10 million + How to Protect Yourself From Those Trying to Steal Your Identity

In a complaint filed on Monday, megastar Ariana Grande said Forever 21 and Riley Rose misappropriated her name, image, likeness, and music, including employing a “strikingly similar” looking model, in a website and social media campaign early this year.

She said this followed the breakdown of talks for a joint marketing campaign because Forever 21 would not pay enough for “a celebrity of Ms. Grande’s stature,” whose longer-term endorsements generate millions of dollars in fees.

This is a classic case of identity theft and while we can’t sue identity thieves for $10 million dollars, there are some practical ways that we could put ourselves less in risk. Here are four ways to protect yourself:

1. Change your password – I know it can be annoying
to have to change your password or remember a new one, but it is
important that you stop hackers dead in their tracks. Change your
password regularly and make sure you include a variety of symbols, so
hackers have a tough time guessing what it is.

2. Create a different username and password –
Instead of using your Facebook login for all sites, create separate
usernames and password per site. This way the breach doesn’t come from
another third party, and you can better protect your account.

3. Set up two-factor authentication – Add another
layer of protection to your account. Two-factor authentication It is a
setting in Facebook where you can choose either text message codes or a
third-party authentication as your primary security method. This way you
know when someone is trying to do something fishy with your account.

4. Delete your personal info – The next time you log
onto Facebook, take the time to delete some of the more personal
information you have shared to reduce your risk of exposure in future
attacks.

SATs Keeps its Same Scoring Model + A Scoring Model You Better Undertand

The SATs are changing course following backlash over a plan to assign an adversity score to every student who takes the exam.The original adversity score was made up of ratings for the student’s school and neighborhood environments and was intended to capture the obstacles a student might have overcome. Critics said over-eager parents could use the score to game college admissions. Instead, the College Board will use a different system in an attempt to capture a test taker’s social and economic background. For many SAT scores can make the difference in so many lives but what other score affects your well-being?

Many people are
aware of the important role the credit rating plays in their lives.
However, understanding what goes into a credit score (the credit score
breakdown) might present some difficulty. There are several different
methods of scoring, but most lenders and banks rely on the FICO method
that has been in existence since the 1980s when it was developed by the
Fair Isaac Corporation. The three prominent credit bureaus (TransUnion,
Experian, and Equifax) all worked with Fair Isaac to come up with the
FICO algorithm.

Your credit score may be any number from 300 to 850. The average
American falls at about 690, which is deemed relatively good credit.
However, while this score should secure you a loan, it will not get you
the very best interest rates on loan. In fact, 300-640 = Bad Credit,
641-680 = Fair Credit, 681-720 = Good Credit, and 721-850 = Excellent
Credit. Excellent credit should be the aim.

Following is the credit score breakdown:

Payment History

The biggest chunk of your score (35%) is derived from your payment
history. This score is influenced by how well (or not) you pay your
bills on time, how many have been sent to collection agencies,
bankruptcies, tax liens, etc. Keep in mind that missing a payment is
worse than making a late payment and that being late or especially
missing a mortgage payment is a bigger blow to your credit score than
missing a credit card or utility payment.

Usage Ratio

The amount of debt you have (compared to the amount of credit you
have not used) accounts for 30 percent of your score. Try not to max
your credit cards out. In fact, it is recommended that you only use 25
to 50 of the credit that is available to you. A way to balance this out
is to obtain more lines of credit and not use them. However, you do not
want to apply for a bunch of credit cards all at once as this is marked
against you. If your credit is in good standing, apply for a reputable
card every six months or so and save it for a rainy day.

Length of Credit History

Fifteen percent of your credit score is based on how long you’ve
established credit. This is common sense. The longer your credit
history, the better your overall score will be. More data about your
past leads to a more accurate prediction of your future credit
worthiness.

Credit Mix

Having several types of credit will actually boost your score if they
are managed well. This counts for 10 percent of the overall rating.

New Credit

As mentioned earlier, opening new credit accounts all at once will
negatively affect your score in the short term. It’s also important that
you are aware that your score can be lowered for too many “hard
inquiries” about your status. A “hard inquiry” is one that you have
authorized a lender to perform. If you are inquiring about your own
score, this will not count against you.

Understanding what goes into the credit score breakdown is the first
step in improving your score and what will allow you to design your
score and begin you on the journey to financial freedom.